Civil War

Channel Encarnacion

HIST 102

10/27/14

Civil War Debate

Was the Civil War Inevitable?

Was the Civil War Avoidable?

In The Irrepressible Conflict by Kenneth M. Stampp he does not argue that the Civil War was inevitable. He does observe, however, that it is hard to see how the country could have avoided some sort of showdown on slavery. Conflict was “irrepressible” in the sense that “the issues dividing the North and South were genuine and substantial and that conflict between them was a natural and logical result.” The civil war was inevitable given the circumstances under which it came. The three main causes: infringement on civil liberties, violation on states' rights, and the collapse of the two-party system made the conflict between North and South almost impossible to resolve. The war was going to happen one way or another. The south originally disagreed with Lincoln’s laws. The North and the South had very diverse views over slavery. The country couldn’t have been integrated if they didn’t come to a compromise. With the north wanting a strong federal government and the south with the contrary wants, the country couldn’t have agreed to go one way or the other. The war had to happen in order for a winner to take control and make the executive decisions. The country would have been splitting with every new state union, leaving the country with a very dissimilar outcome than what is today. The explosion of the American Civil War was caused by a vast number of conflicting principles and prejudices, fueled by sectional differences, and set aflame by a very disastrous set of political events. Certainly, the central theme of almost all of the events that led up to the Civil War was one way or another, related to the disagreement of slavery. Throughout the nineteenth century, slavery-related tensions infused to such an extent, that politicians often took accustom to avoiding the boiling topic altogether, because they were too scared of either starting a big...